About:

Cornfield Dance, a New York City-based dance company, aims to enhance audiences’ ways of seeing and interacting with the world, drawing attention to the power of movement to connect with diverse communities across the city and beyond.

Vision:

Ellen Cornfield choreographs dances that move, entertain, and provoke. She crafts a non-verbal expression that transcends and permeates boundaries, creating a world that exists outside of the realm of the intellectual. The viewer can be intrigued and emotionally captured by the rhythms of the movement and music and the sheer kinesthetic energy of the dancing. It quickens our feeling of being alive and gives sustenance for living.

History:

New York City-based choreographer Ellen Cornfield has been honing her work for over three decades. Her work exemplifies the exhilarating combination of heart and intellect, performed by dancers who “...are among the most proficient technical and kinetically expressive dancers around” (Gus Solomons, 2014). Her dances revel in the use of space, time, and geometric relationships, and have rigorous structures that carry a pleasure all their own. Ellen’s lush, abstract, and full-throttle dance language is interspersed with surprising details that suggest stories that never become literal or obvious. Intelligence and humanity shine throughout. Her singular choreographic vision creates a dance architecture that celebrates movement driven by kinesthetic energy, and the richness of the humanity of the dancers. It is art that is accessible, and at the same moment inspires.

Ellen began presenting her choreographic works after her tenure with the Merce Cunningham Company, where she was known for her spirited dancing. Her early works were seen in the U.S., and then at international venues beginning in 1988, which led to the official formation of Cornfield Dance. The company’s premiere performance was outdoors at Cooper Union Square, NYC in October, 1989.

In New York City, Cornfield Dance has been presented at the Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors Festival and the Harkness Dance Festival, among many others, and outside of NYC at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Yale Center for British Art, Jacob’s Pillow in Massachusetts, the Yard in Massachusetts, and at universities around the country. Internationally, Cornfield Dance has performed in nine countries, including France, England, Holland, Germany, Canada, Poland, Russian and Japan, and at venues such as the OPEN LOOK Festival in St. Petersburg, Russia, the International Dance Festival in Bytom, Poland four times, and Theater X and Session House in Japan.

Ellen’s interest in making her work available to a wide spectrum of audiences has been realized in the company’s intentional variance in performance venues, ranging from alternative spaces including gardens, museums, hotels, and plazas, to traditional theater spaces.